An illustration of NASA’s Juno satellite flying higher than the clouds of Jupiter (as seen throughout perijove 7).
It’s been a busy and exhilarating number of months for scientists who study Jupiter – and area nerds fascinated by the Jovian planet.
Yesterday, a team of researchers declared the discovery of twelve new Jovian moons, transportation Jupiter’s total up to seventy-nine. Last week, scientists disclosed that information from NASA’s $1 billion Juno mission prompt there could also be a previously undiscovered volcano on Jupiter’s moon Io. And last month, the team behind Juno found out that Jupiter’s lighting is more just like Earth’s than previously thought – which solved a 39-year-old mystery.
But most excitingly, NASA confirmed in June that Juno, that has orbited Jupiter since July 2015, will cheat death for a minimum of 3 more years. The probe was scheduled to crash into Jupiter’s clouds this month, however, instead, the mission has been extended until at least July 2021.
That gives scientists an opportunity to finish the mission’s main goal: to map Jupiter’s magnetic and gravitational fields.
This work is finished by flying Juno over Jupiter’s cloud tops at speeds roughly seventy-five times as quick as a bullet. These flybys referred to as perijoves, happen once each 53.5 days. the foremost recent one (Juno’s fourteenth perijove) occurred on July 16, and the prior flyby was on May 24.
The high-speed visits have allowed NASA to document the gas giant like never before. an optical camera known as JunoCam captures beautiful images of Jupiter each time, and also the space agency uploads the raw photo data to its websites. Then individuals around the world will download that information and method it into stunning color photos.
Here are thirteen mesmerizing pictures from the newest perijove, along with a few highlights from past flybys.
